Editing RealVideo (section)

==RealVideo Players==
{{Unsourced section|date=May 2023}}
The official player for RealVideo is RealNetworks [[RealPlayer SP]], currently at version 15, and is available for various platforms including [[Microsoft Windows|Windows]], [[Apple Macintosh|Macintosh]], and [[Linux]]. Several other players exist, including [[MPlayer]] and [[Media Player Classic]].  Many of these rely on the [[Dynamic Link Library|dynamically linked libraries]] (DLLs) from the official RealPlayer to play the video, and thus require RealPlayer to be installed (or at least its DLLs, if not the actual player).  However, [[FFmpeg]]'s libav* libraries (and its [[DirectShow]] counterpart [[ffdshow]]) can play RealVideo and do not require RealPlayer or any parts thereof.

The latest version of RealPlayer that can run on Windows 9x is RealPlayer 8; but this version can be easily modified to play RealPlayer 9 and 10 files, by the manual addition of just three .dll files (codecs and plugins), from Microsoft's free distribution of RealPlayer 10, that are not included in RealPlayer 8 Basic.

RealNetworks has also developed the open-source [[Helix player]], however support for RealVideo in the Helix Project is limited because RealNetworks is still keeping the codecs proprietary.

RealPlayer does not record RealVideo streams, and RealNetworks has advertised this feature to content owners such as broadcasters, film studios, and music labels, as a means of discouraging users from copying video. However, other software exists which can save the streams to files for later viewing. Such copying, known as [[time-shifting]], is legal in most countries.